


to love you is my greatest privilege

by wartransmission



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Drabble, Fluff, M/M, Second person POV, Viktor POV, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 09:11:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9541004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wartransmission/pseuds/wartransmission
Summary: You are not soulmates, not destined, even though you like to think that you would be.





	

People tend to fall in love with looks first, you’ve come to realize.

In your twenty-eight years of life, despite your own beliefs, this has remained true. When you had your first few lovers, they generally said one thing of you:

“ _Beautiful_.”

They spoke other platitudes as though half-hearted compliments could trap your heart with theirs, as though it would be so easy to fall in love as they think they have with you. They meant well, you thought; they didn’t know how your heart worked, and so did what they could with what they knew. They knew love as a quick thing, a thing you fall into headfirst, something you just _felt_ for a person even when all you knew of them was their face.

But that’s now how it is, for you.

It never was.

You tried what you could to like them back. You spent time with them, showered them with affection, shared bits of your heart with them that you usually would not with anyone who isn’t family. You owed them that much, when they chose to pluck up their courage in asking you out. You _tried_.

But you don’t work like that.

What came to them easily, infatuation in the stages of blooming towards love, was something that was hard-earned for you. So much so that you ended up spending those loveless twenty years of your life on skating, because even if skating could not love you back, you could at least set your heart on something instead of feeling so empty.

( _Did it work, though?_

 _Did you feel any less empty, any less numb, after all those medals and flowers and praises for your name?_ )

Then Yuuri came into your life.

Katsuki Yuuri, Japan’s ace skater and a surprising sixth-placer at the Grand Prix, whisked you right off your feet and into a dance, lacing red string of growing fondness around your heart to tug along in his drunken, graceful grasp. What he spoke as a challenge was already your loss, because for all that your heart was not entirely his in his newness and unfamiliarity, your lungs were already caught in the sly curl of his lips at the words,

“ _Be my coach, Viktor!_ ”

You didn’t even know him then. You didn’t know him quite yet. You knew the basic facts: he’s a beautiful dancer, he was a finalist at the GPF, he placed sixth, he has dark hair and brown eyes, and he has your gaze- has your _lungs-_ strung up around his pinky finger.

You weren’t in love, but you knew where you were headed when you took the plane to his hometown.

(It was to the beginning of everything, to a path that would carve out not just your own future, but his as well.)

There, in the warmth of Hasetsu’s ocean tides and sandy shores, the bits of your heart and his fell together, puzzle pieces of his love falling right into the spaces where your heart should be. You fell slowly, out of imaginary affection for a sensual, shameless man and into love with this reserved, glass-hearted, sleeping beauty who owns your heart in its entirety.

You were not in love with him at the banquet, even if you thought you were. Who could blame you? The burning feeling of joy, of exhilaration, was so novel in your heart and lungs when he took you into a dance that you mistook it for the feeling that your past lovers so often spoke about.

You fell in love with him in the end, anyway.

You fell in love not with the man who swept you off your feet and into a dip, but with the man who took his time with you, learned who you were and are and accepted- _adored-_ you for it. You fell in love with this man who makes music with his body and bloomed into courage under your tutelage, fell in love with this skater who grew on the ice ever since he learned of you and had his own breath caught in your silken grasp.

You fell in love with this man who holds you up like you’re his own sun, while keeping you grounded in the warmth of his embrace as he reminds you that you are more- you are _everything_ \- beyond the champion skater of Russia.

You fell in love with Yuuri because he’s _him_ , and he fell in love with you because you’re _you:_ forgetful, blunt, flawed, a human being fit to _burst_ with love for him.

You both fell into love for reasons that could not, can never be, explained by the feeble nature of _love at first sight_. To treat it so lightly, to speak of it as though it were anything less than what it is- love born from time and effort and care- would be to give injustice to the depth of either of your feelings.

You are not soulmates, not destined, even though you like to think that you would be.

What you are is this:

fortunate enough to have been born in a universe where a chance exists for your meeting, yet all the same, fortunate just for having the power to write out your own story. In a life and world where you could have not met, you did, because you chose this path on the ice in much the same way he did (because of _you_ ).

This love has never been a mere chance out of millions, as it was a story set on its course ever since Yuuri first decided he would find his place with you on the ice. And find his place he did, with your heart and his so tangled together now that you cannot even tell where his love ends and yours begins.

To have fallen in love with him at all, and to be so loved back, will forever be your greatest privilege.


End file.
